Man discovers secret safe in grandparents home ...and gets quite a surprise

 

A man who was clearing out his grandparents home after their deaths found an inground safe under the carpet in a closet. There can be no feeling like it; uncovering a secret treasure, a time capsule from his grandparents lives. 

The lucky guy documented his discovery of the mysterious safe hidden in a closet of his grandparent’s farmhouse in rural Tenneessee, where they would often read Treasure Island to him as a young boy. “I always dreamed of finding something like this,” says the man, known on Reddit as ‘Evilenglish‘, in his constant updates over the nine day period spent trying to unlock the safe. You can imagine the anticipation and impatience to get the safe open.

He writes:

My dad passed away a few years ago and he inherited an old farmhouse in middle Tennessee from my Grandparents. The house was a home for my Grandparents for 20 some odd years. 

My Grandfather was an avid sportsman and enjoyed collecting various firearms. My Grandmother was a collector of coins and other antiques and curiosities. My Grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1998, but I think the last time they had traveled to the Tennessee house was around 1997. After my Grandfather passed away, neither my Grandmother nor Father returned to the house. My Father passed in 2009 and we’ve been working to close out his estate and traveled to the farmhouse to prepare it for sale.

Lots and lots of work to do here as it is an old house. I was working in a closet below the stair case, and saw that the rug was pretty disgusting. I rolled it back and discovered a concrete slab with a round iron cap in the center.

“I pulled off the cap and… a secret safe!”

I gave the handle a tug, but it wouldn’t budge. If you twist the handle it will still spin.
I called several locksmiths in TN, but it is impossible to get someone to come out on a Sunday up there (the whole city shuts down about noon on Saturday). Couple that with a 20 mile drive back to town to get cell service. Finally a co-operative locksmith is found.

Tim the Locksmith comes to the rescue:

Here is our locksmith scoping out the safe. He said about 30 mins into this that if he had known what he was getting into, he would have referred the job to someone else. It looked like a complete pain in the ass to open this up. He had to keep his weight above the drill and the workspace was very uncomfortable.

The Safe Unlocked!

It looks so different with the flash on. I looked down in there and it looked like there were several stacks of bricks. I also noticed a LOT of moisture inside the safe. I remember that there was a pipe leak in the house a few years back. I’m sure some of the water from that had accumulated in the safe.

Found inside:

This one looks like a book of coins from a particular year. There were so many like this down there. The moisture in the safe makes the covers very mushy, but the coins inside are in surprisingly good shape!

Lots and lots of coin boxes! I knew my Grandmother collected coins, but I thought we had found all of them!

About 1/3 of the boxes pulled out of the safe, making a pile on the kitchen table…

Small stack of bills in the safe. Soaking wet. Hopefully, I can get these separated and dried out!

There were so many rolls of coins down there. Some of them were in plastic tubes, but more were unfortunately in paper tubes.

More stacks of coin collection boxes…

I found several of these coins. They appear to be silver.

Silver bars found…

In a rusty tool box in the bottom of the safe, jewellery is uncovered.

A commenter on Reddit who also happens to be a coin collector writes that if coins are in a safe they have collector value which is much more than face value. “Notes are often collectable as well, check everything, even if damaged they can still have great value.”
Another commenter advised:

“Just so you know anything from 1964 or older is 90% silver worth about 20 time face value of the coin. $0.50 = $10, $0.25 = $5, $0.10 = $2.00. I also believe 1965-1971 coins of those denominations are 40% Silver and still worth more than face value as well. 

That’s a pretty good score even if half of those pre-date 1965 and not to mention those silver bars!! They’re worth about $22.10 per ounce. 16 ounces in a pound = $353 and those are most likely Kilos which are 2.2 pounds and worth $778″.

And if this guy wasn’t lucky enough, Evilenglish  also wrote about yet another discovery in the house:

I should also say that early last year my brother in law and I were moving some of the furniture. He went to move one of the coffee tables and when he went to pick it up, the table top came off of the base. Underneath the table top of the coffee table was a hidden, standalone safe. It was pretty heavy, but we were able to load it in the truck. He took it to work and was able to cut it open. Inside of it were several pistols (.22s, a 357, and a few others) there were also about 300 single one dollar bills. We found out that there were “Barr Notes” and supposedly rare because that particular Secretary of the Treasury died like 29 days in office.

Stay tuned for updates on the treasure and the evaluation

 Enjoy your good fortune man!